2011 Outstanding Alumnus Award Winner
More than two decades later, Dr. Boyd still remembers the dramatic transformation of a young girl’s face after he removed a pituitary tumor. The girl’s mother has never forgotten how Dr. Boyd changed her daughter’s life; she spent years just stopping by Dr. Boyd’s office to show her gratitude.
With parents who never completed high school, Dr. Boyd never dreamed he would go to medical school, let alone become a neurosurgeon.
The once mischievous 10-year-old, who singlehandedly shut down a small, Oklahoma town after setting a ditch on fire, is eternally “grateful that an opportunity was made for me to become a surgeon.”
Born in Arkansas and raised in Oklahoma, Dr. Boyd received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Baylor in 1960 after an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army. In 1964, he received his medical degree from the University of Tennessee in Memphis. He completed an internship at the Graduate Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and his residency at the Mayo Foundation and Mayo Graduate School of Medicine.
In 1970, Dr. Boyd started his Memphis practice in neurological surgery with Cannon, Hunter, Picaza and Boyd. He became a member of the Semmes-Murphey Clinic in 1975 until he retired in 2007. He also served as clinical associate professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. A generous philanthropist, Dr. Boyd served others in need during medical mission trips to Southeast Asia and Africa. Even after he retired, he continued to see patients at the Church Health Center in Memphis.
At 75, Dr. Boyd has been a patient just as much as he has been a doctor, having undergone close to a dozen hip-related surgeries, four spine- and neck-related procedures, and a thoracic chest surgery. “Through it all, I am still here,” he says.
An active member of ROSES (Retired Old Surgeons Eating Society), Dr. Boyd has offered his leadership skills to a number of organizations including the Tennessee Neurosurgical Society, American Medical Association, the Memphis and Shelby County Medical Society, the Tennessee Medical Association, the Memphis Neurological Society, and the American College of Surgeons.
Married to Janis Knox Boyd for 52 years, Dr. Boyd refrains from telling either psychiatry or law jokes because of his two children — Dan is a psychiatrist and Lundy Boyd Carpenter is an attorney. The Boyds find great joy in their grandson, Joseph Carter.
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